>> pelley: tonight, voting began today in one of the biggest battleground states in the presidential election. >> i can say once in my life i camped out to vote. >> pelley: campaign 2012 reports from dean reynolds and jan crawford. mark phillips on the financial crisis in europe. it's so bad in spain some people are forced to do their shopping in the trash. charlie d'agata in afghanistan where american troops are on the lookout for enemies among their afghan allies. >> every soldier is required to carry their weapon with them at all times. >> pelley: and an ingenious idea for helping the poor inspired by his mother. >> i'm hoping my mother is watching and that she is enjoying this. captioning sponsored by cbs this is the "cbs evening news" with scott pelley.

>> pelley: good evening, election someday five weeks from today but many of the states are getting a head start. today voters in ohio-- one of the key battleground states that will tip the balance on which way this election goes-- began casting their ballots. that brings to eight the number of states where voting is already under way. 34 states in all will begin voting before november 6. the latest preelection polling in ohio-- the second-biggest battleground state-- shows president obama with a ten-point lead over mitt romney, 53% to 43%. dean reynolds is in the buckeye state tonight with the voters. dean? >> reporter: scott, back in 2008, nearly 30% of ohio's more than seven million voters cast their ballots before election day, and the campaigns this time around would love to see them increase that percentage.

>> three, two, one! (cheers and applause). >> reporter: what some are calling election month began in ohio promptly at 8:00 a.m. some voters had overnighted in the parking lot outside a columbus polling place. >> i think there's been a lot of controversy about early voting. >> reporter:'m reld hernandez was there bright and early. >> for me it's a convenience, i can come in and get it done. >> reporter: you spent the night, though, to be one of the very first. >> i did. i was pretty excited. i thought why not? it's something different. i can say once in my life i camped out to vote. >> reporter: the names of the early voters are reported by the county board of elections. not their votes, just their names. the campaigns try to guess how they voted based on where they live or past voting history. chris redfern chairs the ohio democratic party. >> you can make assumptions based on one surname "o'connor or o'brien" for instance. if you have if you have an irish surname, you're probably a member of the catholic church.

we can look at the local parish and whether or not that parish is more conservative or progressive. >> reporter: scott jennings runs the romney campaign in ohio. >> you can make decisions based on who's voted and who hasn't, where you put your dollars, where you send your mail, where you do your phone calling and door knocking. so if i know you've already voted the first week of october i'm not going to send you a piece of direct mail three days before the election. it would be a useless exercise. >> reporter: and in a close campaign, scott, no campaign wants to spend much time or money on anybody other than that small group of voters known as persuadables, the ones who will be getting a lot of attention over the next five weeks. >> pelley: the election already under way. dean, thanks very much. another state that could go either way is colorado. and the candidates are preparing for the first presidential debate in denver tomorrow. mitt romney is trailing far behind in support from latino voters, and he made news on illegal immigration today. back in june, president obama

announced that he would not deport illegal immigrants who came here as children with their parents. well, today romney told the "denver post": >> pelley: jan crawford is covering the romney campaign. jan, that's new. >> reporter: well, scott, this marks the first time that romney has said he's not going to take away the two-year visas from the people holding them. campaign sources say he's not going to extend them and romney said in the interview that's not going to be necessary because he's going to be offering long-term immigration reform. but in two-year visa program is popular with hispanics, that's a group that could decide the election and romney's got to make up some ground. there's a new cnn poll that has the president with 70% of the vote among hispanics compared to romney's 26%. romney is hitting the president hard on immigration. he's saying he's playing politics with this issue, he's

passing what he called a stopgap measure, this two-year program, instead of passing long-term reform like he promised four years ago. scott you can expect to hear more of this in the debate tomorrow night. >> pelley: jan, thanks very much. cbs news will bring you live coverage of the debate tomorrow night beginning at 9:00 eastern time. we got good news today on the economy. overall, auto sales were up 13% last month from a year before. among the u.s. automakers, ford sales were unchanged, g.m.'s were up 1.5%, chrysler reported a 12% increase. there hasn't been enough good news like that on the economy. the recovery, of course, is painfully slow and one of the biggest reasons is the recession in europe. the 27 countries of the european union add up to the world's-largest economy, but they're reporting record unemployment. in spain, unemployment among young people is 50%. mark phillips went to bars low

that to see what happens when an economy goes into freefall. >> reporter: spain can be a deceptive place. in the early autumn sunshine and in the markets groaning with foodstuffs it's difficult to tell this is a country with a collapsing economy and unemployment rate of 25% that threatens to take the rest of europe and maybe even the united states economy down with it. but wait until they close up at barcelona's boqueria market and follow the porters out back to where they dump the trash and you get a different impression. in spain these days, one person's garbage can be another one's sustenance. just because you can't sell it doesn't mean you can't eat it. at closing time around here, the shadows are full of the desperate and the hungry. and when darkness falls, they come out. they joke and call it recycling. ivan and his friends are regulars here. for them there's no such thing

as a sell-by date. >> i know here i can find fresh juice and some vegetables. >> reporter: because many people come here to pick them. >> and not only homeless and -- normal people. >> reporter: there's a new kind of normal in spain. once it was considered shameful to have to take food from one of barcelona's food banks. these trucks used to deliver donated food relief mostly to immigrants who'd fallen on hard times. not anymore. laia ginjoan, who helps run this center, said well over a million people in spain now depend on food banks-- twice as many as before the crisis. and they are a new type of clientele. >> what's shocking for us that never happened before is all these people that are from here-- >> reporter: spaniards from here who previously would have been working. >> yes. >> reporter: feeding their families. >> yes. >> and who can't anymore? >> no, because all the members of their families are

unemployed. that's the main problem. the whole family. >> reporter: to make matters worse, the summer tourism season is now winding down, normally a time of more layoffs. all the projections are for spain's problems to get worse. >> pelley: mark's joining us in barcelona tonight. mark, these terrible problems in spain started as a banking crisis but there's more to it than that. >> reporter: it has been a banking crisis until now and the banks here, as you know, have been bailed out. but now spain is under great pressure to go to europe for a broader bailout. spain, though, compared to other countries which have asked for bailouts-- greece in particular-- is a much bigger country and the sums talked about are absolutely enormous. >> pelley: the next step may be a bailout of the entire country of spain by the e.u. mark, thanks very much. spain is among europe's largest economies, but the government has borrowed so much money that it's been forced into huge spending cuts and layoffs to try to repay what it owes. one of the people working to

rescue europe is christine lagarde. she's the head of the international monetary fund and one of the most powerful people in the world in finance. the i.m.f. is essentially a massive bank that helps countries manage debt and international trade. at her headquarters in washington, we asked lagarde about the spaniards like the ones you just met. >> i feel very bad and very sorry for the people, because i know how hard it is and i know how difficult it is for people who lose their job, for families who find it difficult to make ends meet. but equally i know that it's necessary. and it's a process through which countries have to go in order to restore their situation and be able to grow again and create jobs again. >> pelley: how long do you imagine the troubles in europe will go on? >> it has been going on for a long time. a lot has been done. you know, the europeans have been serious about strengthening

their fiscal architecture. but they need to do more. >> pelley: but what are we talking about here? two years? three? five? >> it's hard to say. i think it will take a long time to restore public finances in the eurozone because it has been long in the making. it will be relatively long in the if i fixing as well. >> pelley: years, then? >> oh, certainly, yes. >> pelley: the unemployment rain in spain is over 25%. >> uh-huh. >> pelley: the unemployment rate for youth in spain is over 50%. this is what we would consider to be great depression numbers in america. will the spanish government have to be bailed out. >> the spanish government is taking very, very courageous measures. whether you look at bank restructuring, whether you look at structural reforms to make to make the spanish economy agile, flexible, able to capture growth, to help people create

jobs. they're also taking some fiscal measures in order to reduce their deficit so all of that is hard. but it's courageous. and it needs to be supported. >> pelley: christine lagarde, managing director of the international monetary fund. late today secretary of state hillary clinton said she put together a commission to investigate the attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi, libya. it will be led by the former head of the joint chiefs of staff, admiral mike mullen and former u.s. ambassador thomas pickerring. they will look at security and how four americans, including ambassador chris stevens, were killed in an attack on the anniversary of september 11. american airlines discovers why some of its seats came loose. u.s. soldiers are on the lookout for afghan allies who may be enemies. and why half of the great barrier reef has vanished. when the "cbs evening news" continues.

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away. the agents were assigned to a border patrol station recently named after agent brian terry who was killed in a shootout with drug dealers two years ago. next sunday will mark 11 years since the u.s. went to war in afghanistan. the second-longest war in u.s. history behind vietnam. the plan for getting american troops out depends on training afghan soldiers to do the fighting against taliban themselves but there have been setbacks lately as some of the trainees have turned their guns on their u.s. allies. 33 americans have been killed that way this year. what the does that do to america's road out of afghanistan? we asked charlie d'agata to hook up with a joint patrol in kandahar province. >> what you see here is the cement blocks, obstacles we put in place. >> reporter: this is the stark new reality for u.s. combat troops working alongside their afghan partners. >> it's restricted the trafficability of anything large

or fast. >> reporter: and that's new within the past two weeks? >> yes. where we used to have this wide open space. >> reporter: lieutenant colonel leroy barker got orders to reinforce his small outpost in kandahar province not against the taliban but against insider attacks from his afghan partners. while there's never been one here, it's already driven a wedge between the two forces. the americans and afghans are separated by a cement walkway. u.s. troops call it the alamo. a u.s. soldier stands guard with the machine gun 24 hours a day. >> it's always in the back of their mind that working with a tiger, you never want to turn your back. >> reporter: afghan commanders are pinned to the wall of the guard post, they tier only ones allowed through the wall. lieutenant colonel barker told us any unidentified afghan that turns up would be shot. there are a lot of people walking around with their weapons around here.

but we've seen people that appear to be patrolling. is that correct? >> yes, every soldier is required to carry their weapons with them at all times. >> reporter: the combat outpost is on the edge of a main taliban route. the camera inside this blimp watched suspicious activity miles away. you have people walking by, get to herders. identifying the enemy within is more difficult. afghan security forces were recruit sod quickly that the americans don't know much about them. under the new orders, every afghan is now fingerprinted and registered on a database. lieutenant colonel barker's men are eager to get back into taliban territory. they took us to the furthest checkpoint they ventured out to since the new orders. the first line of defense against the taliban. the checkpoint is now manned by afghan forces. but we found a disorganized group with few uniforms but plenty of guns, a potential danger for u.s. troops.

>> f you come to an environment like this there are afghans with weapons. >> they're not going to put away their weapons because we're here. as you see, everybody else has got theirs, too. >> reporter: you've built this relationship on trust and you're saying well, hold on, maybe we don't trust you and -- that's not what you're saying. >> right. >> reporter: but that's the impression. >> that may be the message. we tried to soft than blow as much as we can. they felt guilty for the incidents themselves so they understood why we were trying to do this. we're going to continue this relationship as best we can given this and they were good with it. >> reporter: the soldiers that we were with hoped to finish vetting the afghan forces this week but, scott, commanders have a new list of conditions that have to be met before their joint operations can start again and we're told the clock would be reset if there's a new insider attack. >> pelley: hard work to do in afghanistan. charlie thanks very much. the mystery of the loose airline

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midair. passengers were sitting in the seats. the flights had to turn back. american has been reconfiguring planes, moving around rows of seat to create extra leg room and charge higher prices for the comfort. the airline blames the mishaps on human error. some rows were reanchorred to the plane's floor incorrectly. today an american airlines spokesman said: american says mechanics are now evaluating all 47 of its 757s where the same clamp was used. they've evaluated 36 so far and, scott, discovered six had the clamps installed wrong. >> pelley: mystery solved, mark, thanks very much. australia's great barrier reef is a natural wonder and it is in danger. a report out today says half of the reef has disappeared over the past three decades. these before-and-after images show the extent of the damage.

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starts with ground beef, unions, and peppers baked in a ketchup glaze with savory gravy and mashed russet potatoes. what makes stouffer's meatloaf best of all? that moment you enjoy it at home. stouffer's. let's fix dinner. >> pelley: the word genius gets thrown around pretty casually but the mcarthur foundation takes it very seriously. today it announced 23 winners of

this year's genius grant. the winners get half a million dollars, there's no way to put a price on what they give. elaine quijano tells us one of the honorees is helping the poor find their own way out of poverty. >> she didn't like welfare. she didn't like a lot of -- even the people that wanted to be helpful she found it patronizing. >> reporter: maurice miller vividly recalled how his single mother struggled with being on government assistance. >> the social worker kept asking her "what do you need? what's the problems if your life?" and my mother came home and said "she never asked me what i was good at. she didn't asked ask me what i wanted. what i could accomplish." >> reporter: after his mother died, he spent the next 20 years working for an antipoverty nonprofit. but in 2001, he decided to take a different approach. using private donations, he founded the family independence initiative, giving members only one directive. >> do something. do something to get yourselves out of poverty. we're going to be learning from

you. >> reporter: the initiative requires six to eight poor families to form a support group. they must work together to find solutions to everything from child care to increasing savings to getting better jobs. the group can earn up to $160 a month just for keeping accurate records of their successes and failures. other cash incentives are given as they increase personal savings. >> i knew that get together with this group of people would help me. >> reporter: 34-year-old francia peguero decided to try the program two years ago. the mother of three from boston was on welfare and food stamps but had big dreams. >> the biggest one was to buy a house for my kids. >> reporter: peguero got a steady job. with encouragement from her group, she focused on fixing her credit and saving every penny she could. recently she purchased that home. do you think you'd have a house without this group? >> i think i would have a house,

but it wouldn't have the same meaning. >> reporter: why not? >> all the support that i got from these people. >> these people feel like, okay, i'm getting control over my life, i have a community around me, i'm not going to fail, my kids are going to see that and i have a future. >> reporter: in boston alone, 35 families in the program have increased their income 25% since 2010. what do you think your mother would say to you right now? >> i think she'd be very happy. >> reporter: happy he's showing the world that "poor" does not mean "powerless." elaine quijano, cbs news, boston. >> pelley: and that's the "cbs evening news" for tonight. for all of us at cbs news all around the world, i'm scott pelley. i'll see you from the presidential debate tomorrow in denver. good night. captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

coming up, remembering the victims of the d.c. sniper's killing spree ten years later. >> up next on 9news, a computer scam that is everyone fooling some sophisticated users. i'm andrea mccarren. i'll tell you about it next. >> thunderstorms may not be the problem for the morning commute. we'll tell you what could be the problem. this is 9news now. >> ten years ago tonight marks the start of a three-week rain of terror in the washington region. when it was all done, ten people were dead and three others wounded after the series of sniper shootings. there was a stretch in montgomery county which turned out to be one of the deadly. >> this is bruce johnson and we're at the shell station in connecticut in montgomery